345 - Hollywood: The Studio Gambit (Patreon)

345 - The Audience Decides

Fran did not let Ethan leave the price-floor proposal on the table.

"If our lawyers see that page, this conversation becomes a different kind of meeting," she said.

Peter pushed the folder back across the table. Ethan had wanted a way to keep two effects houses from destroying their margins. He had put it in terms that would make any competitor, or regulator, hear a cartel.

"Then the page goes," he said. "We can discuss shared research, overflow work, training, and what each company charges for its own services. Separately. No agreed bids."

"That's a conversation I'm willing to have," Fran replied. "After counsel reviews it."

Peter walked him to the door. The offer had not vanished, but the easy partnership Ethan had imagined had. On the drive back through the dark, he called his legal team and told them exactly what he had proposed. He would rather hear the consequences from them than from a prosecutor.

The next morning, the mountain made business seem very far away.

Elizabeth came down the beginner slope faster than her instructor intended, windmilling one arm while the other clutched a pole. "Catch me!" she yelled.

She fell into the snow before anyone reached her. Ashley got there first, with Ethan and Nicole a few yards behind. Elizabeth spat out a mouthful of powder and sat up, more offended than hurt.

"Are you all right?" Ashley asked.

"I couldn't stop. I thought leaning back would help."

"It doesn't," Nicole said. "Stay with the instructor on the next run."

Elizabeth brushed snow from her sleeve. "There is going to be a next run. I've done boxing and wrestling. I can survive falling over on a pair of skis."

Ethan looked to the instructor, who checked her helmet and asked her to stand. When she did so without pain, he handed her the pole she had lost.

"The film will still be there when we get home," he said. "I'd prefer its lead actress with both ankles intact."

"Juno?" Nicole asked.

Elizabeth's expression changed at once. "Is it really happening?"

"The script is ready, and the schedule works if we start when we planned. It's a part you can carry. That's why I offered it to you."

"You said people might notice it at the Oscars."

"They might. A nomination would be extraordinary at your age. But we have to make a good film first, and nobody owes us a nomination."

Elizabeth nodded, then looked back up the slope. "I still want another lesson."

"Then let your instructor set the speed this time," Ashley said.

Charlize arrived as Elizabeth headed for the lift with her instructor. "I heard Oscars. Have you written the next one for me yet?"

"I have ideas. I haven't had a quiet week to turn any of them into a script."

Mary-Kate glanced over her shoulder. "Ideas for Charlize? Ashley and I got nominations, and she's already won. That seems backwards."

Gal skied up beside them. "You all have awards to argue about. I haven't even been nominated for a Golden Globe."

"You have the box office," Charlize said.

"I know. I'd like someone to say I can act, too."

Nicole joined them, amused by how quickly a morning on the slopes had become a meeting about trophies. "While we're making requests, I wouldn't refuse another strong role."

"You have two Oscars," Charlize said.

"One came from The Hours. Ethan had nothing to do with that one. You got Monster. If he wants to keep making these offers, I'm listening."

Ethan let them talk until the competing requests stopped sounding like a joke. Each woman had a different career to protect. He could not hand out winning scripts like lift tickets, and pretending he could would make the next disappointment his fault.

"Mary-Kate, Ashley, you've built a company that can make more from the Lucasfilm licenses than most movies make in theaters," he said. "When the Warner deal closes, Dualstar will have another library to work with. I need you leading that expansion."

"That's a long way of saying 'not this year,'" Ashley said.

"It is. I haven't forgotten what I promised you."

Mary-Kate looked at her sister. "A billion-dollar merchandise line now. A script when we can actually take time to shoot it."

"And no pretending the script has an Oscar sewn into the last page," Ashley added.

"Agreed. Take Elizabeth with you. She'll make better progress without an audience."

Charlize waited until the sisters were out of earshot. "And my film?"

"After Dragon Ball. I'm already juggling the Lucasfilm handover and Warner's approval. I won't start your project with half my attention."

She studied him for a moment. "I can live with that answer. I won't live with hearing the same one next winter."

"Fair."

Gal stayed. Ethan turned toward her, expecting another argument about awards. Instead she said, "You keep telling me to wait for the role you promised. I need to know there's a plan behind it."

"There is. When the Warner transaction is complete, we can start developing films around the DC characters covered by the media-rights agreement. I still want you for Wonder Woman."

"A part, not a prize?"

"A part people will remember if we make the film worth remembering. It won't make an Oscar irrelevant. It may give you the freedom to choose the work that could win one."

"That's a better argument than telling me awards don't matter." She tapped his glove with hers and pushed off after Charlize.

Nicole had watched the whole negotiation. "You've improved," she said. "You used to promise everyone the same thing and hope they'd forget who asked first."

"I didn't promise anyone a trophy."

"A remarkable achievement." She took his arm. "Can we have an hour that doesn't belong to the studio?"

He looked toward the tree-lined trail. "There's a path below the lodge."

"Then let's walk it." She called to Ashley that they were going ahead and left the skis with the attendant. They had spoken privately about trying for a child; once they were alone among the trees, Nicole brought it up again. Neither pretended they had left the slope to discuss release dates.

• • •

By early July, the summer schedule in this version of Hollywood had shifted into an improbable three-way contest. Disney had moved its $150 million animated feature Chicken Little into theaters early, hoping to recover ground after Mulan II. DreamWorks put Michael Bay's $120 million thriller The Island, with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, against it. MGM sent out Twilight.

The three films were aimed at different crowds. Disney wanted families. DreamWorks wanted viewers who liked explosions with their science fiction. MGM wanted the teenagers who had turned a thin vampire romance into an event before anyone had bought a ticket.

Industry forecasts favored the two expensive films. Henry Cavill and Blake Lively were newcomers by comparison, and Twilight had cost only about $30 million. Critics who saw it early found plenty to dislike: broad performances, familiar turns, and an earnestness that occasionally tipped into melodrama.

The audience MGM wanted found reasons to go anyway. For many of them, Cavill's Edward was the whole point. They brought friends; the friends came back; online arguments about Bella and Edward kept the title in circulation long after the reviews had stopped being news.

The Island opened to roughly $12.1 million in its first week in this crowded calendar. Its campaign pulled back as the studio absorbed the result. Scarlett met the press that Friday and refused to blame a single film for everything that might happen next.

"It wasn't the opening we'd hoped for," she said. "I've got work ahead of me, including Black Widow, and I'm putting my energy into that."

Chicken Little cleared $40 million, enough to avoid immediate disaster, though its reception gave Disney little reason to celebrate. Families came; few critics argued that the jokes or story justified the cost.

Then MGM received its first full-week figure: $65.5 million for Twilight.

Ethan read the report twice. He had expected the romance to outperform the forecasts, but the number made even his own estimate look cautious. The films with larger budgets had drawn the safer predictions. The least respected of the three had won the week.

Reporters began asking what MGM knew about young women that the rest of Hollywood did not. Ethan had no intention of telling them that his answer involved memories from another life. He said only that the audience had told the industry what it wanted, loudly enough this time that no one could pretend not to hear.

While analysts worked out how much longer Edward and Bella could stay at the top, the call Ethan had been waiting for finally came. The Warner studio sale had cleared its last condition. MGM could close.

The headlines waiting on the other side of that call would make Twilight's opening look like a quiet week.